Chapter 6 - The Secret Beneath the Floorboards
The syndicate boss's cryptic words echoed in my mind as the FBI dragged him away.
My father had always been a secretive man, but he was a patriot, not a criminal.
Why would an international money laundering cartel care about the dirt under his isolated mountain cabin?
I turned to Brianna, who was still shivering in the corner of the destroyed office.
"What else did you tell them?" I demanded, crouching down to her eye level.
"I swear, Elena, I only told them about the land," she cried, tears ruining her expensive makeup.
"I just wanted the money so I could move to Los Angeles and be famous."
She was incredibly foolish, but I could tell she was not lying about the cabin's secret.
I instructed a federal agent to escort Brianna safely back to my mother at the spa.
Sloane walked into the office, stepping carefully over the broken glass and bloodstains.
"The perimeter is entirely secure, Elena," Sloane reported.
"Victor will be spending the next twenty years in a maximum-security federal prison."
"That solves one problem," I muttered, staring out the shattered window.
"But we need to get to the cabin right now."
Sloane nodded, and we immediately drove up the winding mountain roads toward my father's property.
The sun was just beginning to rise over the snowy Colorado peaks when we arrived.
The cabin looked exactly as I remembered it, completely untouched by time.
Sturdy cedar logs, a heavy stone chimney, and a wide porch overlooking the dense pine forest.
I unlocked the heavy iron deadbolt using the key I had carried around my neck for a decade.
The inside smelled of old wood smoke, dried lavender, and my father's favorite pipe tobacco.
I walked slowly into the center of the living room.
"Where do we even start looking?" Sloane asked, shining a flashlight into the dark corners.
"The boss said it was under the floorboards," I replied.
I remembered my father teaching me how to build the foundation when I was a child.
He had been incredibly specific about the placement of the hearthstones near the fireplace.
I walked over to the heavy stone hearth and knelt down on the dusty rug.
I pressed my fingers against the edges of a massive, dark oak plank closest to the fire.
It felt slightly loose.
I used my tactical knife to pry the heavy board up, exposing a dark, hollow cavity underneath.
Inside the cavity sat a specialized, military-grade titanium lockbox.
"Good god," Sloane whispered, staring at the dull grey metal.
"Your father was definitely hiding something massive."
I pulled the heavy box out and wiped away the thick layer of dust.
It required a complex, twelve-digit alphanumeric biometric code to open.
"We need a specialized cracking team to open this," Sloane suggested.
"No," I said, shaking my head.
"I know exactly what the code is."
I typed in the exact coordinates of the military hospital where I was born.
The lock hissed, and the heavy titanium lid slowly popped open.
Inside was a single, encrypted hard drive and a stack of faded blueprints.
I unfolded the blueprints and felt all the blood rush entirely out of my face.
"Elena," Sloane asked nervously, "what are those?"
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"They are the structural schematics for the United States Strategic Command's underground nuclear bunker," I whispered.
And a sticky note attached to the drive read, "Victor knows who I really worked for."
